The utility industry traditionally has determined power consumption for billing purposes through the use of meters mounted at some accessible location at a customer facility. Watthour readings have been visually made and hand recorded by meter readers in appropriate ledgers. However, as technology has progressed, visual reading and hand recording of meter data have been supplanted, at least with respect to commercial customers, by automatic reading and recording devices. In their general configuration, these hand carried devices include solid-state memory and an associated microprocessor driven control which develops a communications protocol through input-output (I/O) devices associated with both the meter and reader device. One popular I/O approach employs an optical communications port wherein small infrared (IR) transmitter and receiving elements are mounted at the transparent meter face. Communication with these I/O devices is by a corresponding I/O device which is positioned and magnetically coupled to the meter face. This latter communications coupler is about a two pound component which is connected with the control unit by coiled flexible cable. Close physical association of the communications coupler with the meter communications port is necessitated in view of the ambient light interference which otherwise would be encountered with the typical outdoor mounting of meters. Because of the relatively heavy structure of the cord connected magnetic coupler, operators will drop them from time to time with attendant dirtying of optical components necessitating attendant maintenance requirements.
Over the recent past, electricity meters have been introduced to the marketplace having highly sophisticated electrical parameter measuring capabilities. Marketed, for example, under the trade designation "EMS-99" by TransData, Inc., the meters perform essentially in digital fashion and are capable of deriving a greatly expanded number of power parameter readouts, thus making a greatly heightened selection of power data available to the utility employing them. The metering devices also utilize an expanded control capability and, thus, are receptive to more elaborate programming instructions from the servicing utility. By comparison to earlier metering devices, the amount of data which are generated and would be transferred by conventional opto-coupling techniques is greatly expanded.